Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 12, No. 6, May 1963

The clerk looked at the black disc and frowned. “Another complaint? Do you think I have nothing better to do than listen to your bellyaching? The die we sold you would have lasted years if you’d used pasteboard like everybody else! No die in the world will stand up to bindersboard for any length of time!”

“Just a minute,” Norton said. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“What else is wrong—?”

“Just tell me one thing,” interrupted Norton. “What company has been using your dies to cut discs like this from bindersboard?”

The clerk stared in astonishment. “Don’t you know? I thought you came from them!”

“Who is them?”

“Why, the Fur Workers Supply Company, of course!”

Samuel Stern of the Fur Workers Supply Company was just shutting up shop for the night. He received Norton in a low-ceilinged room behind the shop. On the work table were the tools of the furrier’s trade — rubber skulls and glass eyes for mounting fox heads, dyes and knives and needles and thread for working in fur, great bolts of heavy silk for lining fur coats, wadded cushions for lining muffs.

The little furrier was extremely cordial and invited Norton into his office.

“Can you tell me what this is?”

Stern took the black disc and smiled as if the question were absurdly simple. “It’s a button fastener.”

“And what is a button fastener?”

“A button is never sewed to a fur coat,” explained Stern. “Fur skin is so tender that the pull of the threads would soon wear a hole in it. So you take a flat disc with slots on either side, pass a narrow piece of tape around the disc, through the slots and knot it. Then you cut a small slit in the fur skin and slide the disc in edgewise. Once it is lodged between fur and lining you turn the disc so it lies flat and flush with the fur. Then the diameter is too wide for the disc to slip back through the slit it entered edgewise.

“The two ends of knotted tape hang down outside the slit on the fur side. They are passed through a loop on the underside of the button and knotted again. This holds the button firmly in place without wearing a hole in the fur. We call such a disc a button fastener. As long as it is in place, the button cannot fall off.”

“But if great force were exerted?” said Norton. “If someone seized a button and tugged with all his might? Wouldn’t the flat side of the button fastener press against the slit in the fur until it was split wider? Then wouldn’t button and tape and button fastener all come loose together and fall off the coat?”

Stern looked at Norton with eyes bright under bushy gray brows. “People don’t often indulge in a rough and tumble when they’re wearing fur coats.”

“What if someone wearing a fur coat committed a murder and the victim seized a button in the death struggle?”

“It would happen just as you described it.”

“And the button fastener might fall on the floor and roll away by itself?”

“Certainly, if the tape came unknotted.” Stern touched the nameless clue — no longer nameless. “I have heard of buttons being found at the scene of a crime. But a button fastener is something new.”

“One more question.” Norton was tense as he leaned across the worn desk. “Is their any way of distinguishing this particular button fastener from all others so it can be traced to the coat from which it was torn?”

Stern held the disc under a desk lamp. “You may call it luck, but this particular button fastener is unusual. So unusual that I believe it might be traced to one particular coat.”

“How?”

“Usually button fasteners are made of pasteboard or leather. Only one manufacturer of furriers’ tools was ever foolish enough to make button fasteners of bindersboard — myself. My son is just out of college and full of bright ideas that won’t work. This is one of them. Bindersboard makes fine button fasteners but it wore out our new die in a few days. We’ve gone back to pasteboard. So far we’ve only sold one sackful of button fasteners made from bindersboard. That sack went to Newton and Brill, retail furriers here in Pearson City. They are only a few blocks from here.

“They can give you a list of customers who have bought fur coats containing button fasteners made from bindersboard. As Newton and Brill only bought the sack a few weeks ago, there won’t be many names on the list. Indeed the changes are that only one of those names will be connected with the murder you are investigating.”

Norton looked at his watch. “The shop will be closed by this time. Can I reach Newton and Brill tonight?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until morning. I don’t know their home addresses.”

Norton was glad he had not dismissed his taxi. He was beginning to realize the folly of fighting Benda’s gang single-handed. He needed help and the only man who could help him effectively was Kimball. The district attorney would have to listen to a man as influential as Clement Kimball. It would be time enough to interview Newton and Brill in the morning, but he must see Kimball and if possible the district attorney tonight before Benda made another move.